About the role

Muon seeks a Senior Mechanical Engineer to join our team. This role is responsible for the design, build, and test of spacecraft and/or large subsystems that Muon launches, specifically Solar Arrays. You’ll be at the frontlines of implementation, working with the mission formulation team to understand the customer needs and lay out a space vehicle that solves those needs. You’ll pull internally developed ‘off the shelf’ parts from our avionics team, or source them externally, or design new items in-house. You’ll then develop those parts into full systems, and consider the mechanical, thermal, structural, and dynamics of the full flight system. You’ll be tasked to lead decisions on make vs buy for hardware and to conduct risk analyses. Documentation of the designs will be paramount, presenting them internally and to external customers.

You’ll be responsible for a portfolio of core technology and are expected to lead architecture definition, establish standards, process, and best practices for team and external stakeholders. As such, you will define roadmaps with 1 year+ horizon.

The ideal candidate can go deep on design and analysis but also has a “systems mindset” and will be a force multiplier collaborating with other disciplines to arrive at an elegant, well-balanced design.  Being an early-stage startup with a small team, breadth is extremely important and we expect this person to dive into structural data, dynamics, thermal design, supplier management and everything else associated with the full lifecycle of an electromechanical product.

Due to the hands-on nature of this role, it does require onsite work at our Mountain View location.

3-5 years experience designing/building/testing flight hardware in the Space industry, or similar in Aero, Self Driving, etc.

Responsibilities

• Create, review, and refine spacecraft mechanical design with product structure in a modern CAD package (Solidworks)
• Ownership of delivery of mechanical vehicles and subsystems, acting on multidisciplinary designs between launch provider, analysts, avionics, program, thermal, optical, and RF engineers
• Find solutions and manage development of clean-sheet mechanical / structures architectures through detailed design consistent with the risk posture, development velocity and deployment schedules at Muon
• Make economically sound choices for the company balancing the need to quickly demonstrate capability while understanding the path to scaled-up constellations (e.g Make vs Buy).
• Create quick concepts that can be used to discuss and spur inspiration on the team in early phases of programs.
• Perform basic stress and dynamic analyses (hand calcs, simple FEM) to support and inform structures designs including joint design, basic stiffness analyses, etc.
• Contribute to maturing Muon’s mechanical engineering standards and culture
• Design basic test fixtures to support development and environmental testing
• Influence flight designs to ensure hardware is easy to both build and test

Required Qualifications

• Familiarity with solar panels. Preferably SADAs. Deployables. HDRMs. Composites.
• 5+ years experience designing/building/testing flight hardware in the Space industry, or similar in Aero, Self Driving, etc.
• Demonstrated proficiency in design of high-value, low volume systems, especially for use in low temperature, vacuum, clean room environments
• Competence in one or more of the following: Structural Analysis, Thermal management and modeling, TVAC and vibration testing
• Extensive documentation capabilities: build procedures, test plans, DOEs, in addition to design notebooks
• A desire to change the way the world understands and reacts to climate and environmental data
• B.S. or higher degree in Mechanical Engineering
• 5+ years using CAD for medium-large assembly management
• Mastery of drawings, GTOLs, and BOMs, FAIs, tolerance budgets and mass budgets
• Diligence in using ECOs and DCOs
• Excellent communication, presentation, coordination skills & curiosity
• Dedication to drawing conclusions on the most important factors and data
• Excited to work in a fast-paced environment with new opportunities each week
• Experience managing external vendors for part prototyping and development
• Materials selection capabilities beyond the typical 6061 or ABS/PC
• Manufacturing processes beyond milling, molding, casting

Nice-to-have Skills

• Flight heritage of your designs
• Experience with reaction wheels, torque rods, star trackers, ADCS
• Management of junior engineers and technicians
• Usage of test equipment such as accelerometers, strain gauges, load cells, DAQs, thermocouples, vibration tables, thermal chambers
• Mastery of inspection equipment
• Qualification of external vendors and CMs
• Experience designing and executing structural tests for spacecraft
• Large assembly management in Solidworks PDM, Duro PLM
• Google workspace; Sheets, Slides, Docs. Slack
• Experience running structural analyses for spacecraft (FEMAP, ANSYS)
• Optomechanical instrument design
• Software skills in one or more of Python, Matlab, C, C++
• Experience working on thermal management systems for spacecraft
• Shipped hardware designed for spacecraft, aircraft, automotive or similar environments

Salary

• The salary range for this role is $142K - $206K and will depend on a candidate's skills, geographic location, qualifications, and experience as defined during the interview process.